Sunday, May 25, 2014

I mean, really now, who cares about one little podcasting
network anyway? In the grand scheme of
things such concerns are less than trivial if not inconsequential. If a beloved icon of tech journalism like Leo
Laporte chooses to delude himself while his Rome is burning what business is it
of ours if he chooses to believe otherwise?

If TWIT vanished from the landscape of
Internet content the number of people who actually cared would be lower than
the percentage of LGBT's in the Tea Party.

...and the king of Tech punditry would do just fine thank
you...

Still...

Over the past few months I've continued to witness a sea
change at TWIT with the most obvious symptom an exodus of popular hosts and
programming. In their place bizarre
additions like Marketing Mavericks, a
show based on sucking up to the kind of people who dreamed up click-through ads and stadiumsnamed after cell-phone companies.

And then there's the ads! Oh those god awful ads! Where do they find these products??

Of course, not everybody agrees with me...

"I'm good enough,
I'm smart enough, and doggone it people like me!"StuartSmiley

If you can sift through the barrage of delusional
self-affirmation and staunch denial of anything contrarian that pervades today's
TWIT, there are still gems to be found on the network.

Shows like This Week in Law, This week in Enterprise Tech, Windows
Weekly and the grand old man of the group This Week In Tech still
shine. Unfortunately, to find them
you'll have to ignore the cognitive dissonance that promotes Tech
News Today (TNT) as still being relevant or Floss Weekly and Ham
Nation as being interesting. Incidentally,
after almost 6 months, TNT stillconsistently ranks far behind
Tom Merritt's Daily Tech News show and
has yet to break into the top 10 on most ranking authorities.

With the often abrupt departures of popular talent like Tom
Merritt, Brian Brushwood and even Iyaz Akhtar, the void that remains has been filled (with varying degrees of success) by hosts like:

Father Robert Ballecer, the affable and upbeat "digital Jesuit"
who is increasingly ever present and likely heir to TWIT if not for his "other"
job.

Chad Johnson, OMGCHAD
and newest Laporte protege' who is often called upon to beta test new
programming like the short-lived This Week in YouTube and RedditUP (currently
in beta.)

Sara Lane, a stalwart
TWIT personality and second only to Laporte in the sheer volume of shows she
hosts. As one of the few remaining
alumni from Laporte's TechTV days, Lane appears loyal to Laporte but one has to
wonder if those convictions have been tested since the surprise departure of so
many TWIT colleagues from the network.

And of course, Laporte himself who recently took back
hosting duties of TWIT's tech review show Before You Buy after former host and
producer Shannon Morse left TWIT's full time employ.

Shannon Morse, the contractor, now only appears once a week on TWIT
as co-host of Coding 101 with Fr. Robert Ballecer.

Morse, known most prominently from Darren Kitchen's Hak 5 was
a recent addition to the network in the past year. Her decision to trade a full time gig
at TWIT to be a contract host for one show (while doing at least 2 others for
Revision 3) can only be viewed as a foot out the door.

The only time a full time employee converts to a contractor
these days is when somebody is on their way out and Laporte taking back hosting
duties of Before You Buy underscores just how "out" Morse
really is.

But let's be fair here.
While TWIT's apparent missteps are beginning to border on habitual, it's
not entirely their fault. Take a look at
those same podcast rankings that are so damning to TNT and you'll find a
saturated landscape. Everybody and their
brother seems to have a tech podcast.
Couple that with the fact that the novelty has worn off. There's very little new information out there
and "revolutionary" is just a marketing buzzword. Technology isn't "magical" anymore
and even your grandmother can use an IPad.

Go ahead, check The Verge, TechCrunch or even TNT (if you
can stay awake) and the content is without fail a daily march of ad nauseam
reviews of yet another "revolutionary" smart device. Lest we forget the constant security breaches
of well known web properties and tech pundits desperately inflating their copy by reviving long dead
adjectives like, "plaudits."

Not very exciting...

Short term gain
leading to long term consequences.

That TWIT advertising has increasingly strayed from a tech
focus to products like razors, jewelry and snacks may be an indication that
tech just isn't that sexy anymore. Unfortunately,
it also frequently results in content straying from technology to heated debates
over single versus multi-blade razors.

Viewer's of TWIT could likely care less about razors,
underwear and harvest rice sticks when they're watching Security Now or
Windows Weekly. At times even the hosts seem annoyed as they
hawk often ridiculous and contextually irrelevant wares. With an average of 2 to 4 live ad reads per
TWIT show, anything that strays from the content runs the risk of losing an
easily fickle audience.

Where TWIT may once have been a destination rivaling its
progenitor, TechTV, in the past year
it's become more akin to G4. In case you don't get the analogy, G4 began as a cable channel focused on
video games and gaming culture and ended with a schedule largely consisting of Cops reruns and infomercials.

TWIT's bizarre programming changes, a trend of topically irrelevant
advertising and exodus of talent paint a dark picture of the network's
future.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Darkness has fallen on Caledonia and once powerful empires
have met their oblivion by no fault of their own.

Lord of Ultima is
dead, killed by a revenue model incompatible with its keeper.

Those looking for someone to blame need look no further than
Electronic Arts (EA.)

It appears that EA sees no value in what has been described
as "niche" gaming. "Niche"
in this case applies to gaming titles that weren't designed to leverage the
online cash cow that premium memberships and endless DLC offer in more recent
titles.

Lord of Ultima's
shutdown is just another casualty of the ongoing implosion of online gaming.

It's a growing trend following on the heels of a bomb dropped
by Gamespy
in April when they announced that their longtime gaming services would cease on
May 31st. Even if you've never heard of
them before, chances are you've used their services at one point. Gamespy provided the online middleware for
games on platforms from PC to Android.

More recently, EA announced it was droppingonline support for many popular older games on June 30th. A few notable examples include Crysis 2, Battlefield Vietnam and Need For Speed hot Pursuit 2.

Yes, most of the games getting the cut are a bit long in the
tooth but a pattern's been developing .
It wasn't so long ago that online gaming was a choice not a
requirement. Multiplayer games only needed
to involve as many people as you could gather at a LAN party and it didn't matter
if your Internet connection was down.

As game development has moved from a few hotly anticipated
titles to annual installments of varying quality it seems it's less about the
game than the franchise it spawns.

Producing a sub-par game is irrelevant if you can prime the
hype pump with the promise of a seemingly never-ending stream of content.

For a price...

With that has come "always-on" requirements for
single player games, frequent server outages, half-baked triple-A titles and
increasing prices to cover "development costs" even as publishers
shut down their development studios by the dozens.

I guess all that bandwidth is expensive...

It's a model incompatible with games that are truly
"Free to Play" and in its wake has come an avalanche of titles that may
start out to be free to play but are almost always "Pay to Win."

Lord of Ultima was
somewhere in the middle. There were ever
more intrusive opportunities to purchase upgrades and buffs to improve the
experience but if you were willing to suffer a little more inconvenience than
your well heeled competition you could still do well.

That option runs contrary to a model dependent on the cash value
of players. After all, they're a discerning
bunch and won't tolerate banner ads and endless spam flooding the email
accounts they registered with.

They say nothing in life is free and it's a fair enough
cliche'. Servers and bandwidth aren't
free and the "Free to Play" model is built on the assumption that
dedicated players will gladly loosen the purse strings every once in awhile to
improve their experience.

But "once in awhile" isn't good enough anymore and
more often than not "Free to Play" isn't free at all.

The model has been perverted. The experience has become more about the store
page than the game itself leading to a score of me-too clones and one-offs
looking to cash in. Some are even
blatant about it but they're the exception not the rule.

The practice of "Pay to Win" frequently hides behind
the mask of "Free to Play" which is nothing less than "Bait and
Switch" and it's killing the gaming industry. It's bad faith and that's not a sustainable business
model.

Spend a little time reading the Wall Street Journal and you'll find out that companies often receive
a valuation based more on their "good will" than the products they
produce.